This article discusses architecture as having both a literal and virtual order. The virtual order relates to what is not physically present through concepts like virtual space, gesture, and monstrosity. It uses the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as an example where the virtual order of reflections creates a space where the living and dead intersect. It argues the virtual order is fundamental to how humans relate to space and that the origins of this can be traced to an imagination that gives life to material causes rather than formal concepts. It explores how architecture uses gestures and monstrous forms to communicate through a virtual order that operates through secrecy and prohibition rather than direct representation.

1. This article was downloaded by: [New York University]
On: 06 May 2015, At: 12:34
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41
Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Journal of Architectural Education
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjae20
Architecture as Reading; Virtuality, Secrecy, Monstrosity
Donald Kunze
Published online: 08 Jan 2014.
To cite this article: Donald Kunze (1988) Architecture as Reading; Virtuality, Secrecy, Monstrosity, Journal of Architectural Education,
41:4, 28-37
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10464883.1988.10758499
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the
publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or
warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed
by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with
primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings,
demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly
in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic
reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is
expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions

2. Architecture as
Reading; Virtuality,
Secrecy, Monstrosity
Donald Kunze was born in North Car-
olina and educated at N. C. State Uni-
versity School of Design (architecture),
Georgia State University, and Penn State
University (geography). His dissertation
was on the imagination's role in the per-
ception of space. He is currently Assis-
tant ProfessorofArchitectureat PennState
University, where he has taught studio
for the past four years. In 1985 he co-
founded the Commonplace Confer-
ences, a series ofsymposia dedicated to
the collaborative interests of philoso-
phers, geographers, and architects on
the topic of place. His book, Thought
and Place, The Architecture of Eternal
Places in the Philosophy of Giambattista
Vico, has been published recently by Peter
Lang (See JAE, Vol. 41, No.3, Spring 88
for a review of this book). He is currently
working on the use of metaphor in archi-
tectural design and interpretation, and is
also planning for "The Year of Camillo,"
a series of events dedicated to the re-
appreciation of the relation between
architecture and memory.
The phenomenon of virtual space is fun-
damental to the way human beings relate
perceptually, behaviorally, and existen-
tially to their world. Virtuality is the pres-
ence of what is not literally present, and
it thus enables the immanence of build-
ing to be annealed to the pastand future,
analogous form, and hypothetical pos-
sibility. In sum, virtuality is synonymous
with "architecture" proper, as opposed
to building simple. Through the use of
gesture, the non-present is made present
and given a secret status ruled by a non-
classical or "grotesque" order. The prin-
ciple of our access to the virtual is based
on the act of reading, where the move-
ment from the actual to the virtual is
simultaneously a spatial and a philo-
sophical transformation. Reading is not
simply the translation of phonetic or
iconographic characters into their lin-
guistic equivalents, but a restructuring of
the space of appearance. The origins
and evolution ofthis "space ofreading"
are characterized by a distinctive archi-
tecture, and the architecture of inhabit-
able spaces is conditioned by this dis-
tinctive architecture: the architecture
of reading is the means of reading
architecture.
Summer 1988 JAE 41/4
All night I sat reading a book,
Sat reading as if in a book
Of sombre pages.
The sombre pages bore no print
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.
-from Wallace Stevens, "The Reader."
Architecture is an art of presence that
depends upon an actual or imaginary
specification of some spatial situation
scaled in relationship to the human body.
But, the experience of architecture is not
determined simply by a harmony of
building with the body and its needs but
by a doubling of the architectural "code"
into two parts. The first part is the order
of the literal building, which runs
according to the consideration of the
physical, functional, and even the sym-
bolic circumstances of building. This
completes the Vitruvian triad of firmitas,
utilitas, and venustas, for even beauty
can be considered under the conven-
tional demands of a society for the taste-
ful, significant, and decorous.
The second kind of order is analogical
and ana-logical in comparison with the
first. And, rather than assume a subor-
dinate and complementary role to the
dominate concerns of function, sub-
stance, and taste, this "lunar beauty" (as
Auden would have called it) finds its
strongest voice in counterpoint. This can
be seen more clearly where the unifi-
cation of an "architectural concept" is
absent and one's experience is thrown
back on real events that nonetheless
engage a sense of unreality, as in Maya
Lin's Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in
Washington, D.C. (Fig. 1) In this utterly
effective work, we find that the two orders
seem to be engaged in an actual com-
bat; and even the physical forms com-
pose a diagram of opposition that shows
this relationship in its radical denomi-
nations. (Fig. 2)
The shape of the design is literally a 'V',
but the polish of the black granite dou-
bles this as an 'X', or 'chi.' The gradual
descent into the virtual space created by
the wedge allows the discovery of the
reflection to creep up on the observer,
and in the context of an emotionally
charged moment the effect is cleared of
all sentimentality and charged with the
gnostic legibility of what is happening.
The "unreal" presence of the virtual
reflections informs us that the real dou-
ble code, always and ever, is that of the
living and the dead. The architecturally
problematic crossing (aporia) is achieved
symbolically in the chi-asm of the
reflecting wall, and its effects are dis-
tributed with such precision that all who
encounter the wall "know" that the joints
are points of penetration into a sepul-
chre, where the reflected images of the
visitors are blurred into spectres of the
dead standing behind their names.
"Virtual space," as a special form of sig-
nification, should be distinguished from
the ideas of reference, symbolization,
and architectural quotation. These
require participation in the culture that
produced them as conventionalized acts.
In contrast, virtual space strikes free from
convention. It is not culture-specific or
quotable, because it is basically non-
representational. No idea or concept
"stands behind" its effects because of its
virtuality. Maya lin's wall will be under-
stood long after the Vietnamese War and
its tragedies have slipped from public
memory. It actualizes an imaginary truth
rather than a conventional idea. Its
effectiveness is guaranteed by the
untranslatability, the public secrecy, of
its text.
What is the origin of this doubling of the
architectural code, the efficacy of an alien
and prohibited order alongside the nor-
mative? In the place of an architecture
of concepts and ideas, this shadow realm
despite its radical otherness serves to
bind together the most disparate com-
munities. To call on a master of these
kinds of distinctions, Iwould like to invoke
a characterization made by Gaston
Bachelard, who wrote in L'fau et les
Reves:
"The imagining forces of our mind develop
along two very different lines.
''In some cases, they find their impetus in
novelty; they are amused by the pictur-
esque, by variety, by unexpected hap-
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015

3. where virtuality is a prominent force:
gesture and monstrosity. Gesture, as a
"silent language," places us between the
pure conventionality of known forms and
the mute unintelligibility of objects.
Monstrosity isthe question of mazed form
that, in the face of its own chaos, surveys
the most subtle and delicate of truths.
.....................................
---....-....
------
1·2 Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, Washington , D.C.
(photo and sketch by author)
penings . . . . Other forces plumb the
depths of being, where they search for
the primitive and the eternal. They rise
above seasonality and history. In the
natural world both inside and outside
us,theyproduce seeds; seedswhere form
is thrust into substance, where form is
internal.
"Putting this philosophically, one would
be able to distinguish two imaginations:
one imagination which gives life to for-
mal cause and one imagination which
gives life to material cause or, more suc-
cinctly, formal imagination and material
imagination."l
The a-conceptual character of this
"material imagination" was early sensed
by Mozart, who wrote in a letter to Bar-
oness von WaldstCidten that he regretted
that he had studied music instead of
architecture for he had often heard it
said that the best architect is a man who
never has an idea. An alternative title
for this essay might have been "Archi-
----------"",-
------- "'""'"
tecture without Ideas," but such a title
without Mozart laughing behind it gives
the wrong impression.
The poetic virtual space of Maya Lin's
memorial is, coincidentally, a virtual
space in the ordinary optical sense. What
I would like to develop, given the lessons
of this straightforward example, is a
general theory of virtuality. In the rather
unique circumstances of the reflecting
walls of the memorial, the meeting place
of the living and the dead is given the
diagrammatic form of chiasmus. I will
argue that chiastic collision is funda -
mental to virtuality. As against the con-
sistencyand rationality ofordinary space,
we find values opposed to the Vitruvian
values of utilitos, firmitas, and venus-
tas-counter-values that do not really
compete with the normative Vitruvian
order as much as they deepen and inform
the relationship between conventional
space and the prohibited order of the
grotesque. To see how this might be so,
we must address two other domains
The Silent Language of Gesture:
Secrecy
Gestures "speak" in a way that pre-
serves a duality between saying some-
thing and not saying it, a kind of atten-
uated or concentated language that is
characteristic of the hieroglyph, flag, and
emblem. Gestures, to be interpreted
properly, must be placed back into a
narrative context, for they are abbrevi-
ations of dramatic action. But, given the
catholicity and historical endurance of
this fabular tradition across different
cultures and periods, gesture and other
forms of silent speech constitute a form
of universal language.
When the gesture rather than speech or
the text is used to signify, being silent
takes two senses. First, it suggests that
one cannot speak or write on account of
some restriction or lack of ability. (I will
refer to all such limitations as "priva-
tion.") Second, it indicates that some-
thing must not be said, for example, a
secret or unpronouncable name. (I will
refer to these collectively as "prohibi-
tion.") One remarkable quality of the
coupling of privation and prohibition in
gesture and other forms of silent speech
is that it is often difficult to tell which is
in force. One waves for lack of any bet-
ter means of greeting a friend across a
crowded room. But when the message
is an insult, threat, or curse, what can't
be spoken is taken for what should not
be spoken . The gesture is made as a
milder form of the ma/adicta, the curse,
which places for more serious obliga-
tions on the sender and receiver. But it
suggests that virtuality may require cir-
cumstancesof privation to make the cru-
cial connection between the virtual and
the forbidden.
The coupling of privation and prohibi-
tion is especially evident in architecture
where either limitations of site or mate-
Summer 1988 JAE 41/4
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015

4. rial or the unavoidable occurrence of
ruin bring about the sense of a project
tragically interrupted by death or grief.
Sir John Soane's museum-house in lon-
don, built over an extended period of
time within the existing structures of three
town-houses, is a project limited in the
first sensethat has something of the sec-
ond sensein its final effects. (Fig. 3)
This residence is so familiar to architec-
tural audiences, that its history and lay-
out need little introduction," The idea of
creating a museumwithin the context of
a family seat had already occurred to
Soane, but the restrictions of the apart-
mentsat lincoln's InnFieldsalso required
this "virtual" program to occupy a vir-
tual space. Within the ordinary domestic
spaces, there are thin spaces running
alongside the gallery and near the ceil-
ing, created by coves and lanterns. Two
interior courts maintain a giddy balance
between inside and outside, and the
"Roman tribune" ofthe main gallery draws
a vertiginous vortex of plaster castsdown
to the Egyptian sarcophagus Soane pur-
chased from the art smuggler Balzoni.
But perhaps the most extreme effect is
produced by the hundreds of mirrors
Soane slivered into nearly every avail-
able panel. This reticular ghost-grid
works like a crystal poche that super-
imposes the virtual houseonto the actual
with cartographic precision. In weaving
through thereal and reflectedthinspaces,
the visitor becomes aware that Soane,
the compulsive pedagogue, is putting
forth a lesson in architecture. (Fig. 4)
The virtual museum is explained archi-
tecturally at several locations that work
like "primal scenes." For example, in the
picture room, a room thatextendsbeyond
the major rectangle formed by the first
two of Soane's three converted apart-
ments, large hinged panels fold out to
reveal a series of paintings. The last
panels on the south wall open onto a
void in which Richard Westmacott's
Statuteofa Nymph perches on a slender
beam. Here, the visitor is allowed into
thethin space behind the mirrors. Behind
the statue is a view of the monastic ruins
and the monk's tomb. We know from the
lore of melancholy that this is the "rhe-
Summer1988 JAE 41/4
3 Sir John Soone's museum house, london
(photo by outhor)
torical" tomb of the architect. The con-
firmation of the "secret reading" of
Soane'smuseum-house in thethin angelic
space revealed behind the leaves of
paintings converts the privation of the
wall poche to the prohibited order of the
niche.
Monstrosity
Images of virtuality and secrecy involve
important questions about the nature of
order: the coexistence in architecture of
two different kinds of order, actual and
virtual; and the role of gesture in
mediating these as if they were two dis-
tind spatial regions. Now it is necessary
to take up the problem of what is meant
by "order."
Themonsterisa mythological form drawn
from a rhetorical phenomenon. Philol-
ogists have claimed that until language
developed an understanding of causal-
ity, mediation, or other logical pro-
cesses, the relationship between things
was indicated by simple juxtaposition,
or parataxis, in contrast to the opposite
strategy of hierarchical ordering, hypo-
taxis. In the logic of emblems, a fool and
a skeleton holding hands convey the
complex truth of a momento mon, and
the absence of words seems to contrib-
ute to the depth of poignancy.
The Sphinx, a kind of paradigm exem-
plar of this form of meaning, belongs to
a category of forms that express tem-
poral relationships. (Fig. 5) This com-
posite image is a visual riddle whose
"answer" is "the year," and the disjunc-
tion of animal parts additionally con-
veys the ancient idea that the seasons
make war on each other, as separate
combatants. The identification of para-
4 Sir John Scone's museum house, interior
(photo by outhor)
tactic form with the riddle comes from
two sources. First, simple juxtaposition
generates many meanings, not just one,
and often the different interpretations are
strongly at odds. Such was unintention-
ally the case when Erasmuschose as his
emblem the god Terminus and the motto
"I yield to none" (concedo nul/;). He had
intended this to refer to the all-powerful
rule of death, a momento moti, but his
enemies took it to be a statement of van-
ity, as if Erasmus had intended to play
the role of Terminus himself.
Second, the subject matter of emblems
and other paratactic forms originates in
mythand ritual. TheSphinxasthe emblem
of the annual cycle survives as an arti-
fact of the original dramatic enactment
of thesacred mysteryofseasonal change.
Sacrifice, death, and rebirth involved
knowledge shared only by initiates who
hid their secrets beneath the masks of
riddling icons. That the monster was
consciously thought to be a paradoxical
or illicit "marriage" of contrasting forms
and ideas is suggested by the Roman
practice of calling the children of pros-
titutes "monsters"-literally the prod-
uctsof illicit unions-and on this ground
throwing them into the Tiber."
But my purpose for using the monster as
a memory image is comparatively mun-
dane. The monster runs against the idea
of order usually discussed in architec-
tural theory, namely that of Classical
ideas of order-canons of proportion-
ality, subordination of parts to wholes,
and correct composition. The ideals of
Classicism and more especially neo-
Classicism in architecture could be com-
pared to the role taken in logic by the
principle of non-contradiction. Funda-
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015

5. 5 From Giovio Vescovo di Nocero, O;o/ogo defl';mpresse
mi/itarai etamarose (Lyon: Guglielmo Rovillio, 1574)
ED
tive terms. With virtuality, the negative is
present as a possible spatial region, with
imaginary extension and structure. With
the exchange of privation for prohibition
at the boundary of this region, the merely
negative becomes gnostic. And the
monster's riddle invites the articulation
of the negative, the unravelling of its
mazed form. Virtuality, secrecy, and
monstrosity describe a place of learning
and discovery which is frightful and lim-
inal but also compelling and attractive.
mentally, both involve a positive valua-
tion of clarity, continuity, and consis-
tency. But the monster stands for nothing
if not for contradiction. Monstrosity is
perceived only if one sacrifices the lit-
eral and sane world of classical taxis.
The Medievalist Ernst Curtius has given
a definitive account of how these two
opposed kinds of order are related in
history and culture. Western art and lit-
erature have been affected by Classi-
cism ever since people began reflecting
on what makes art crt.' The idea of the
Classical grows out of the practice of
selecting the works of early authors as
models for imitation in schools. Alex-
andrian philologists were the first fo put
together a physical selection of earlier
literature, and since then the question of
what works should be included in this
canon has been debated. The term clas-
sicus grew out of this debate, as where
Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae, XIX, 8)
advised the use of writers who belonged
to the first class of citizens, the classici.
This political bias against the proletariat
has continued intact, it seems,to the extent
that even the modern employment of
Classical forms by certain contempo-
rary historicist architects carries with it
a propaganda for the aristocracy. The
emphasis on the "Classic" is inevitably
an emphasis on authority. And, in the
context of a society dominated by pri-
vate corporations, a conservative if not
reactionary ethic is to be expected.
Curtius, however, notes that Classicism
has always been accompanied by an
equal and opposite critical force. For
lack of a name with fewer historical con-
notations, Curtius borrows the term
"Mannerism" to designate the a-histori-
cal common denominator of all tenden-
cies opposed to Classicism. Understood
in this sense, Curtius argues, Mannerism
is a constant in European literature and,
one might argue, in the arts as a whole.
I use the monster to remind us of the
principle feature of Mannerism: its diet
of contradiction, enigma, mental diffi-
culty, and metaphor.
In these terms, there is no point in label-
ing a period of history. Rather, a signif-
icant truth is to be found in understand-
ing the impulse behind "Classicism"-
in whatever form-and the possible
response to this impulse as a "Manner-
ism." The monster stands for this search
and represents the kinds of meanings
that Classicism can describe only indi-
rectly. The point is not to condemn
the classical desire to generate canon-
ical form, but rather to complete the
picture that Classicism cannot finish
because of its devotion to consistency
and noncontradiction.
The Analogy of Reading
It has been necessary to enumerate the
three parts of a non-Classical architec-
tural signification-virtuality, secrecy,
and monstrosity-because there is no
wide-spread agreement about what
constitutes a Mannerist presence in
architecture. The part of architecture that
can be consumed through conventional
use and symbolization of a building is
well served by the Classical triad of fir-
mitas, utilitas, and venustas. It seems
unlikely that anyone would endorse
publicly an alternative Mannerist triad
of "virtuality, secrecy, and monstrosity."
But the turning point comes when, like
Sartre in his analysis of Nothingness, we
begin to evaluate the negative in posi-
Virtuality calls for a "theory of reading,"
for even the momentary recognition of
such a Mannerist order confronts our
ordinary ideas about building. But there
is a sense where "reading" here is used
as more than a characterization. Read-
ing can be regarded simply as the com-
monplace act whereby the real space of
the reader connects itself to the imagi-
nary space of the book without philo-
sophical perplexity. But reading is pre-
cisely that form of imaginary motion and
time that suspends, in an ordinary way,
rules of form similar to those that dom-
inate architecture through convention.
A question of dimensionality seems to
stand in the way of any use of reading
as a metaphor for understanding archi-
tecture. Reading's linear array of signs
produces images that, in turn, construct
the three-dimensional fictive world of the
book. If architecture is thought to exist
as an already three- or four-dimen-
sional phenomenon, an act of reading
cannot occur in any ordinary sense. But-
and this is the pivotal issue of my the-
sis-what if the dimensionality of a work
of art is not automatically given by the
medium of the art form, but is drawn
from our experience of the work? What
if, in addition, the serial dimensionality
of perception and the multi-dimensional
restructuring of memory are implicit and
indispensible to the understanding of any
work? Then it might be possible and even
necessary to say that reading is our prin-
ciple metaphor for the way in which lived
artachieves abiding permanence through
virtuality, gesture, and re-ordering. In
this light, architecture's principal con-
nection to philosophies of language are
not to the text as phenomenon (to be
Summer 1988 JAE41/4
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015

6. deconstructed) but to text as experience,
which is intrinsically self-deconstructing.
But even where architecture is "writ
large," not everyone reads. In the Soane
Museum, for example, tourists hang like
glazed bats before paintings, plaster
casts, or mummified cats but pay no
attention to the miraculous use of space.
If architects conceived of reading as the
strategy of concealing esoteric mean-
ings within their designs, architecture
would be understood only by specialists
and critics. It could not, as in the past,
serve as a means to civic well-being. But
the insistent human need for a virtual as
well as an actual world-and the neces-
sity of reading and not just inhabiting
architecture-offers, additionally, an
escape from this condition.
Architects are given barely more than
four moments to construct an opportu-
nity for reading. As in Soane's case, the
first opportunity is provided by some
technical means of creating a swerve
from the ordinary understanding of a
space. (I would borrow Lucretius's term,
c/inamen, meaning "turbulence within a
flow.") Soane does this with mirrors,
vertiginous spaces, thin spaces, and
aedicu/ae. Thesecond opportunity comes
with the chance to repeat this swerve,
with a variation that clarifies its meaning
and strengthens its intent. The third
occasion is a confirmation. The fourth
chance is carried out as a reader's
experiment that in strong architecture is
met decisively, as in the picture-room or
tribune of Soane's museum.
This four-step theory of architecture is a
corruption of Jan Mukarovsky's account
of how art is consumed, where the linear
temporal order of reading is comple-
mented by an inverted order of memory,"
reading -? realization
ABCD -? D'
ABC -? C'
A B -? B'
A -? A'
Mukarovsky attempted simply to distin-
guish the "consumption" of a work of
art from the acts of mental reordering
Summer 1988 JAE41/4
whereby the immediate past experience
of the work was added to the present
moment, as an accumulating context of
evolving meanings. In architecture, this
corresponds closely to the way in which
the building is consumed in ordinary time
(horizontally left to right), but is informed
by a virtual order that we might call
"architecture," elements re-ordered
through memory to effect the presence
of a virtual space within a literal one
(shown here as a vertical, upward
motion). The connection is not determi-
native or indicative, but gestural. The
body's anatomy and capacity to move
physically and mentally is made into a
sign executing a trace within a labyrinth
of built spaces. The successful comple-
tion of a swerve (c/inamen) from nor-
mative meanings of the building depends
on the ability to elaborate a "silent
language" out of the conventions of
form, and to represent this zone of silence
as a separate spatial region, an
architecture.
Interlude
The study of questions of meaning in
architecture has understandably drawn
from dominant traditions in linguistics,
criticism, and philosophy. The four most
influential have been hermeneutics,
structuralism, semiotics (derived from the
Philosophy of C. S. Pierce), and semiol-
ogy (based on the structural linguistics
of Soussure]." The models of authenticity
employed by these traditions have for
the most part been based on the inten-
tionality, competence, or performance
of the speaker/listener or writer. Struc-
tural linguistics has preferred systems
based on phonology and has empha-
sized fundamental differences between
the two tropic strategies of metaphor and
metonymy. Hermeneutics has preferred
the original conditions of writing as its
basis of authority. Semiotics and semiol-
ogy have included a broad range of
human activities as types of speech
acts (myth, ritual, social interaction,
mass communication, and politics, for
example).
Without giving due justification for say-
ing so, I would claim that, of the four
modes of linguistic behavior, speaking/
listening (almost always paired) and
writing have been emphasized, but
reading has been subordinated to other
interests. And, with a neglect of reading
as a general metaphor for human com-
munication or understanding, the intrin-
sically spatial problem of the dimen-
sionality of reading has never been
understood. Certainly, some correction
of this situation seems to have been made
in the last ten years' worth of "reader
response" theories. But one finds that
few of these recent schemas consider
reading as a spatial, let alone an archi-
tectural, matter.
looking from the other side, it hardly
needs to be said that few of the theories
about how space or architecture is per-
ceived take very seriously the implica-
tions of reading as a fundamental human
behavior, except to use reading as a
general characterization for any form of
interpretation, as did Galileo in his sug-
gestion that nature was a "book" to be
read by one who understood its (math-
ematical) language. One important
exception is the philosophy of culture of
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) which
takes the radical position that "reading"
historically precedes ordinary articulate
speech in that the first act of the human
mind proper is the perception of nature
as a sign made from gods to mortals.
Subsequent attempts to interpret these
signs-through divination, sacrifice, and
the exercise of religion in general-
establish the basis for social institutions
that are later secularized.
"The first men, who spoke by signs, nat-
urally believed that lightning bolts and
thunderclaps were signs made to them
by Jove; whence from nuo, to make a
sign, came numen, the divine will, by an
idea more than sublime and worthy to
express the divine majesty. They believed
that Jove commanded by signs, that such
signs were real words, and that nature
was the language of Jove. The science
of this language the gentiles universally
believed to be divination, which by the
Greeks was called theology, meaning
the science of the language of the gods."7
It is significant that Vico's emphasis on
reading is accompanied by an account
of primitive mankind's metaphysics as
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015

7. one creating a " virtual" world out of the
natural one, established by mute signs
held to be divine; and that the science
of these signs was regarded as secret.
No less important is Vico's argument that
this perception of a virtual and divine
nature occurred because, in the first
place, the primitive mind was unable to
form an abstract idea of things; and that
their mental privation was converted into
a poetry of virtuality as animism.
"For it has been shown that it was defi-
ciency of human reasoning power that
gave rise to poetry so sublime that the
philosophies which came afterward, the
arts of poetry and criticism, have pro-
duced none equal or better, and have
even prevented its production.:"
Vico gave a primary place to the for-
mation of the idea of Jove out of the
signs of lighting and thunder, calling it
the first "imaginative universal" (univ-
ersale fantastico].9 Unlike the abstract
universals used by the modern mind
which are drawn out of the properties of
particulars, imaginative universals gen-
erated a world around them. How was
this done? The answer to this question
may provide a means of connecting -the
world of Vice's "first men" to the archi-
tectural situation where, in contempo-
rary circumstances, new and virtual
worlds arise out of an act of imagination
that we call reading.
The Antiquity of Reading
If one may be freed from the limited mis-
conception that reading is only the visual
or tactile consumption of phonetic
alphabets or standardized ideograms,
one is forced to grant reading a far
greater role in the evolution of human
consciousness. If Vico was correct in
claiming that " reading" involved the
apprehension of nature as a series or
system of signs divinely or otherwise
made to be read, then reading begins at
precisely that moment when a true human
mental life becomes possible. The two
events, in fact, are indistinguishable as
cause and effect. Communication can
exist without language, as sociobiolo-
gists have shown. But writing can exist
only when mankind collectively realizes
that the stimulus and response are at first
disconnected and then rejoined by the
symbol. Symbols as mediators draw a
veil over nature as stimulus, creating a
world of virtual possibilities that, in turn,
make possible a hypothetical future for
human works.
Reading, however, imposes a logical
condition of enormous importance. The
sign, as something written, must be
regarded as something left behind. It
establishes that the place of writing is
elsewhere, and temporally prior to the
act of reading. Harold Bloom has given
usthe ideal term for this condition, drawn
from Kabbalistic lore: the idea of zimzum,
or "divine contrcction."!? The mystic
authors of the lohar held that the cre-
ation of the world was atfirst impossible,
since God was evenly distributed
throughout a perfect universe. For the
world to appear, it was necessary for
God to contract his divinity, and this
contraction was called zimzum. In the
wake of this movement backwards, signs
were left behind as fragmentary clues of
God's presence. But the space of human
existence was charged by the negative
quality of this contraction. It took on the
geometry of the curse, which is, etymo-
logically, round or spiral.
For our purposes, it is not the event itself
but the architecture of the event that is
most interesting. The first condition of
this architecture is a distinction between
two entities, one active, the other pas-
sive. Latin etymology shows that the word
for "heaven," (coelum) also means
" wedge-shaped burin," an instrument
used for writing. Along these lines, the
sky is a kind of stone or clay skin upon
which celestial events write difficult texts.
Birds, communicating between the worlds
of gods and men, become special envoys.
The Stoic tradition refined much of this
metaphor of mythic reading, to the extent
that we might borrow some of its basic
ideas. Andrea Steuco developed the idea
of coelum as both "heaven" and a
wedge-shaped writing instrument by
reviving the classical distinction between
animus, the principle of active mentality
and creation, and anima, nature as pas-
sive substcnce." Heaven was assayed
as pure ether or fire: triangular in shape
and present only as brightness. In iconic
representations of mind and God, this
symbol is coupled with the eye to
emphasize its immaterial and supersen-
sible nature. Vico elaborated this con-
nection in his Autobiography:
II From the word coelum, which means both
'chisel' and the 'great body of air,' [Vico]
conjectured that perhaps the Egyptians,
by whom Pythagoras was instructed, had
been of the opinion that the instrument
with which nature makes everything was
the wedge and that this was what they
meant their pyramids to signify. Now the
Latins called nature ingenium, whose
principal property is sharpness; thus
intimating that nature forms and deforms
every form with the chisel of air.... And
the Latins used the word anima for air
as the principle which gives the universe
motion and life, and on which the ether
acts as male on female. The ether insin-
uated into living beings the Latins called
animus; hence the common Latin dis-
tinction, 'anima vivimus, animo senti-
mus': by the soul we have life by the spirit
sensation.... And just as soul is acted
on by spirit, so spirit would be acted on
by what the Latins called mens, meaning
thought ... And this thought or mind
would come to men from Jove, who is
the mind of ether. Finally, if all this were
so, the operating principle of all things
in nature would be corpuscles of pyra-
midal shape."12
The ancient world believed that divine
writing was done in the underworld,
based on the evidence of the daily rota-
tion of the heavens. Signs read at night
must have been written during the day,
beneath the horizon. Like the sun, they
suffered death and rebirth each night,
treading the labyrinth of Hades. The
underworld's reputation as a place of
writing came about through the function
of the horizon. By mediating day and
night, dark and light, the horizon was
quickly homologized to other polar
mediations: the visible and the invisible,
knowledge and ignorance, garden and
wilderness, life and death. Writing came
from the liminal space ofthe dead, where
eternity afforded the privilege of perfect
knowledge of the past, present, and
future.
Summer 1988 JAE 41/4
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015

8. Because of this homology of mythic
thought, we can study the under-world
as the primal scene of writing by looking
at the ways it was transposed into other
forms. The ascent and descent of the sun
in the sky was correlated to the hero's
odyssey and trials in the wilderness. The
cave-the prison of the sun-became
the prototypical place of initiation,
instruction, and burial. It was for many
subsequent centuries the preferred sym-
bol for birth, as we see in early paintings
of the Nativity. One might even see the
logic of the horizon employed as a struc-
ture of inquiry and exploration in as late
a source as Herodotus, where every
report, or logos, established itself in terms
of a location along the line between the
Greek world and unredeemable bar-
barians. The resulting mega-horizon
defined the Greek oecumene as a
bounded disc of visibility surrounded by
the unknown, whose remoteness was
given the shorthand iconography of sav-
ages, cannibals, and monsters."
The place of reading for first cultures
was established as the epitome of the
horizon and the region it bounded. Vico
observed that the first men desired to get
a better view of the sky, the source of all
human law, by clearing places in the
forest that were simultaneously temples,
observatories, burial grounds, sacrifi-
cial altars, and the fields of an incipient
agriculture. The foundation rites of
ancient cities preserve this cross-con-
tamination of meanings in their use of
the plow to mark out the city walls; the
sacrifice of a victim held to be the twin
of the founder; and the meaning of the
altar as a mundus or mouth connecting
the living with the ancestral dead-a
connection that fed the dead with blood
in one direction, and living with proph-
ecy in the other.
The actual historic places of reading were
ironically both central and peripheral.
In many cases, they began as a burial
ground shared by a number of tribes in
a region, attended by a small priest-
hood. As in the case of the marshy site
of the Roman Forum, such places were
liminal often by virtue of their topogra-
phy and certainly by virtue of their use.
Summer 1988 JAE 41/4
The transformation of the necropolis into
a Forum followed the tradition of a foun-
dation rite, where in order to make the
ground stable for building a sacrifice
had to be made. In the Roman case, an
apocryphal story is given about a noble-
man, Curtius, who rode fully armed into
the "chasm" which had opened up in the
Forum, in response to the sybil's call for
a sacrifice of "Rome's most valuable
possession"-a citizen unafraid to die
for his city.14 In the version of the story
that gives S. Sylvestro this role, the mire
is changed into a dragon, after the leg-
end of St. George. This story echoes
Marduk's battle with Taimat, Jonah's
gastronomical tour of the whale,
Aeneas's prophetic descent into the
underworld, in fact every traditional
hero's obligatoryvisitto the underworld,
the theme known in Greek as the kata-
basis. Foundation rites were a variation
of this motif, where the cornerstone was
used as a place to intern a victim sacri-
ficed so that the mortar might fix. Signif-
icantly, the words "mortar" as well as
"quick-lime" are drawn from direct ref-
erences to the dead and the living (mort
and vivus.) Every temple as well as every
house and city thus contained a ritual-
ized labyrinth whose function as a hero's
tomb insured the stability of the building
above. It is possible to see that this archi-
tectural relationship, which is present in
our experience of building even after the
custom of foundation is no longer pre-
served, is fundamentally a matter of
writing and reading.
Reading as Subtractive
Dimensionality
Reading, from the beginning a space of
divination, reveals its monstrous and
privational nature in a space that is non-
representational, even anti-representa-
tional. Representation seems to aim
towards an additive dimensionality,
which I might illustrate by the naturalistic
drawing's use of one dimension (the
viewer's line of sight) to construct two
(the image), two to suggest three (depth),
and even three to imply time as a fourth.
Even in reading, it is a linear text that
works additively. Repetitions, folds, and
pleats build up two-dimensional images
and three-dimensional places. But this
form of representation is instrumental
and necessary for the consumption of
the text, just as the normative dimen-
sionality of a building is necessary for
its conventional use. What about the kind
of reading that subtracts, or "decon-
structs," dimensionality?
I might note that such "Mannerist read-
ings" begin with privation, and here I
would like to allude to the event common
to all faery tales describing the trials of
a hero, and frequent enough in more
sophisticated forms of literature to sug-
gest the presence of a universal arche-
type: the hero leaves home.
In the 1920's Vladimir Propp analyzed
all available Russian faery tales in order
to identify basic motifs and laws oHorm.
Discovering that in fact there were no
more than thirty-one simple events, that
all stories were combinations of a few
or many of these events, and that no
event ever occurred out of its sequence
in the complete set, Propp concluded that
all faery tales are of one basic type."
The prominent division in the list of thirty-
one events occurs between the event of
someone leaving the hero's home, giv-
ing the hero the opportunity to violate
some interdiction; and the hero's own
departure, quest, and return. "Leaving
home" in its most innocuous form gen-
erates a travel norrotive.ls ln its stronger
and perhaps more primitive form,
"leaving" implies dying or a similar
change of state; and the visit is made,
metaphorically, to the land of the dead.
Since Propp, we have had the remark-
ably diverse scholarship of Victor Turner,
who more than any other has shown that
the pilgrimages, initiation rites, dreams,
and other ventures into "Iiminoid" space
draw their meaning and iconography
from eschatology. In other words, the
exotic land of the quest is a displaced
scenography of Hell and its related ter-
rae incognitae. The dimensionality of lit-
erary journeys to the underworld (the
theme of katabasis) provides us with a
model of subtractive dimensionality and,
additionally, a link between primitive
myth and our contemporary situation.
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015

9. Iwill label the typical parts of the journey
to the underworld with terms borrowed
from rhetoric. In some cases, the rhetor-
ical act is nearly identical to the dra-
matic one.
Ekphrasis. The journey to the under-
world could be regarded as the proto-
type of any fictional experience, but in
most cases it occurs as a story within a
story. The main action is brought to a
halt as the hero confronts a threshold. In
Book VI of the Aeneid, Aeneas stands
before the gates to the temple of Apollo,
fashioned and donated by Deedolus in
appreciation for his sanctuary there."
The images prefigure what is to come
(Deedolus = Aeneas), and if we trace
back this occasion of the decorated
threshold to funerary myth, we discover
that the images constitute a form of map
to the mazed pathways of the under-
world. The three dimensions of the fictive
world are stripped to two: the fascina-
tion of the image on the occasion of
halted dramatic motion.
Katabasis. Before the pilgrim can deci-
pher fully the images before him, he is
drawn away and forced to begin his
descent (the two-dimensional image is
exchanged for a one-dimensional
movement). The involuntary nature of this
initiation exemplifies an exchange of
privation for prohibition. The lack of any
adequate comprehension of the expe-
rience before its inception places the
matter in the lap of fate, and the journey
becomes a ritualized induction where
the initiate is stripped of all status and
power. The loss of this control, accom-
panied by a loss of a dimension directly
symbolized in the one-dimensional jour-
ney itself, sets up a polarity. The image/
map/memory complex represents the
vision of the whole, and the labyrinthine
path becomes the model of all immanent
experience. The riddle of the present is
answered by an image that connects this
moment with past and future. "Every
labyrinth must have a plan," wrote
Auden: image and path are two aspects
of the same idea.
Prosopopoeia. The end and goal of the
mazed underworld journey is the gnostic
place of discovery, from which the dead
speak. This final point is dimensionless,
but its reality is that which Borges called
"the Aleph," a point in which all reality is
contained in a timeless monad. Eliot's
image of the axel-tree in the Quartets,
or any of the countless images of the
center of the earth convey the cainci-
dentia oppositorum of turning and cir-
cularity: motion and stillness in the same
mechanism. Lestwe think that this ancient
motif is unique to faery tale and myth,
we should consider the "modern" use of
subtractive dimensionality where irony
becomes a tool capable of dismantling
all "representative" relationships
between the author, the reader, and the
text. In many cases the role of dimen-
sions in this deconstruction is directly
evident and portrays even more clearly
the role of privation (which becomes the
subtraction of a previous dimensional-
ity) and monstrosity (the direct use of one
dimension in paratactic structure). The
one-dimensional consumption of the line
of print, whose intertwinings build three-
dimensional fictive worlds, actually iso-
late a final dimension: that which sepa-
rates the reader from the work. The illu-
sion of the work, which resides within
this final dimension, can be broken in
the presence of irony; and this irony can
be brought into the test itself, in a prac-
tice called "romantic irony."18 As in Don
Quixote and Tristam Shandy, the writer
interrupts the reader to alert this latter
to the insurmountable problems involved
in completing the work. Both reader and
writer consider the work as such-a
possible failure-and the illusion of the
fictive world seems to bubble out. But in
this paradoxical space that moves from
a three-dimensional fictive illusion to a
four-d imensiona I iron ic rea Iity, the
machine of writing is disassembled; and,
with it, the god of the interior. This moment
of melancholy is, for lack of any extrinsic
and instrumental reference to other
spaces, othertimes, and othermeanings,
completely here and now. In this seem-
ingly circumscribed and dimensionless
point, we are equally nowhere and
everywhere.
The philosopher Alexander Nehamas has
described moments of virtuality in his
reading of Proust's Remembrance of
Things Post." Nehamas argues that
Proust's mesmerizing images, such as
those of the lilacs, the church spires, or
the jars lowered to catch minnows in the
Vivonne River, are not secret codes con-
ducting the reader to ideas or feelings
that are primary and prior to the text.
Instead, they are "things in themselves"
that Proust describes as concentrated
points around which fascination con-
structs a kind of altar.
At first, this altar seems to be a mythic
mundus leading straight to the Absolute.
After absorbing the ironic lessons of
Proust, we rea Iize how the Absolute may
be deleted without diminishing the magic
of such image-altars. In my terms, such
points are monsters, whose opacity or
inability to communicate is interpreted
as a charm that prohibits ordinary
speaking. Nehamas explains that Proust
himself writes from the point-of-view of
one who discovers that no hidden mean-
ings lie behind his childhood memories.
Yet, by focusing on the exact moments
when images become enigmatically
"mute" as opposed to simply opaque, we
his readers begin to understand that
Proustian questions are more important
than hermeneutical answers. And, one
should not forget that Remembrance of
Things Past was the product of Proust's
self-admitted privation-his lack of
something to write about.
In conclusion, the theme of descent, a
commonplace of poetry and literature,
provides us with an atlas of "virtual
reading" and tentative names for its crit-
ical moments. Additionally, in the geo-
metries of ekphrasis, katabasis, and
prosopopoeia we have a means of con-
necting our contemporary and architec-
tural situation with an ancient and liter-
ary one.
Architecture as a Material
Narrative
It has been observed frequently that
architects have "nothing to write about,"
that architecture is dead. Certainly, most
of our writing and thinking about archi-
tecture is dead, too. In the act of mourn-
ing, perhaps we can raise the possibility
of rebirth, put in pragmatic terms. To do
this, we must learn how to "think through
things," to engage the "material imag-
Summer 1988 JAE41/4
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015

10. ination." And, just as there is a philos-
ophy of conceptual thought, there may
also be a philosophy of this kind of
"thought-through-things." Where the first
type of philosophy adapts a style of cat-
egorical oppositions and subsequent
resolutions, the philosophy of a materi-
alist form of thought may aspire to the
Medieval style of seeing, where at any
and every level of phenomena, the pat-
tern of universals is worked inwardly
through the necessities of form that is
also idea. The "imaginative universal"
invented by Vico as the principle of myth
has a counterpart in the universal that
architects must invent for themselves in
rejecting the authoritarian structure of
history, contemporary philosophy, or
technology.
Itseemsto me that sucha universal begins
with the lie, that is, the story. The story
helps one avoid a contemporary para-
dox, which Imight label "the simultaneous
scorn of truth and worship of facts."2o
The present-day Cretan, unlike the Cre-
tan of the ancient paradox, is obliged
by the modern worship of facts to assert
that "AII Cretans"-that is, all mod-
erns-"tell the truth." This is just as par-
adoxical an assertion, since it involves
the same logical fallacy of self-refer-
ence. The possibility of an architecture
true in contemporary terms, meaningful
without nostalgic references to the past,
depends on an inventiveness that solves
this paradox of compulsive truth-telling.
Again, it is Vico who has foreseen this
situation with clairvoyant precision:
"The poet ... because his business is with
the majority of men, induces persuasion
by giving plastic portrayals of exalted
actions and characters; he works, as it
were, with 'invented' examples. As a
result, he may depart from the daily
semblances of truth, in order to be able
to frame a loftier semblance of reality.
He departs from inconstant, unpredict-
able nature in order to pursue a more
constant, more abiding reality. He cre-
ates imaginary figments which, in a way,
are more real than physical reality
itseIf."21
Vico had remarked earlier in the same
Summer 1988 JAE 41/4
6.1
6.2
6.3
work that, while "the man who is learned
but destitute of prudence deduces the
lowest truths from the highest, the sage
instead derives the highest truths from
the unimportant ones."22 The drawings
of Curt Dilger (Fig. 6) serve as a heuristic
guide to the elevation of the ephemeral
to the universol." Appearing at first to
be located somewhere between the rep-
resentation of fragmentary form and the
development of hieroglyphs, Dilger's
drawings work singly and in series to
dissolve the "retinal" evidence of reality
into a solution that begins to crystallize
the virtual. In the process of this diges-
tion of conventional form, a kind of mor-
tification takes place. Reticular lines,
marks of construction, and the flotsam
of a pictorial "wind" that sweeps the
landscape free of conventional refer-
ences establish an ironic and anti-rep-
resentational space where the question
of dimensionality can no longer be put
in terms of geometric relations to a pic-
ture plane. The drawings, no less than
the hero of the quest, enact ekphrasis,
katabasis, and prosopopoeia. And, no
6.4
6.5
6.6
less than the polished wall of the Viet-
nam Veterans' Memorial, they engage
the Mannerist values of virtuality, secrecy,
and monstrosity. They must be read, and
in being read, their "sombre pages"
recall the possiblity of burning stors."
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were read
at the School of Architecture and Land-
scape Architecture, University of Min-
nesota and the School of Architecture at
the Georgia Institute of Technology. The
author is indebted to Mary Alice Dixon
Hinson, Garth Rockcastle, David Leath-
erbarrow, Dennis Playdon, Wladislaw
Strumillo, Lawrence Wolfe, Marco Fras-
cari, John Templer, George Dodds, and
Louis Inserra for comments and criti-
cisms of these earl ier works. He is espe-
cially grateful to Curt Dilger for his com-
ments on this work in all its stages, and
appreciates this artist's permission to use
and discuss his drawings. Part of the
research of this investigation was funded
by a Research Initiation Grant provided
by Penn State University.
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015

11. 6.7
6.8
gramic and calligraphic deformations of space. This unti-
tIed series of nine drawings, a part of this project, was
produced especially for this essay.
24 This reference and the opening inscription were taken from
Stevens, Wallace The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Vintage Books (New York) 1982, pp. 146-147.
the Beginning, the End of the End," Perspecta 21, Yale
School of Architecture (New Haven) 1984, pp. 154-172. In
particular, Eisenman (p. 171) has called forwhatthis essay
attempts to provide in limited detail: 110 not-classical archi-
tecture [that] begins actively to involve an idea of a reader
conscious of his own identity as a reader rather than as a
user or observer."
5 Mukarovsky, Jan Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value and
Social Facts (Mark E. Suino, trans.) Deportment of Slavic
Languages and Literature, University of Michigan (Ann
Arbor) 1979
6. It would be presumptuous and cumbersome to provide on
adequate bibliography to cover these topics, but I might
refer the reader to Kunze, Donald Thoughtand Place: The
Architecture of Eternal Places in the Philosophy of Giam-
battista Vico P. Lang (New York) 1987.
7 Vico, op. cit.. §379
8 ibid., §384
9 For the topic of "irncqinctive universality," consult Verene,
Donald Phillip Vico's Science of Imagination Cornell Uni-
versity Press (Ithaca, New York) 1981, pp. 65-95.
10 Bloom, Harold Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from
Blake to Stevens Yale University Press (New Hoven) 1976,
pp.16-17
11. Avgvstini Stevchi Evgvbini (Steuco, Agostino) De perenni
philosophia libri X Nicolavm Bryling et Sebastianvm
Francken (Basel) 1542, Bk.VII,Ch. 10
12 Vico, Giambattista TheAulobiography of Giambattislo Vico
(Max Harold Fisch and Thomas Goddard Bergin, trans.)
Cornell University Press (lthoco, New York) 1957, pp. 148-
149
13 de Certeou, Michel Heterologies: Discourse on the Other
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) 1986, pp. 67-79
14 Burdick, Lewis D. Foundation Rites, With Some Kindred
Ceremonies The Abbey Press (New York) 1901; also con-
sult the authoritative standard work, Rykwert, Joseph The
Idea of the Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in
Rome, Italy and the Ancient World Princeton University
Press (Princeton, New Jersey) 1976.
15 Propp, Vladimir Morphology of the Folk Tale (Laurence
Scott, trans.) University of Texas Press (Austin) 1968
16 Rother than leave the reader with the impression that this
is a trivial category, r would mention a subtle essay by
Johnstone, Henry W. "Odysseus as a Treveler: A Cate-
gorical Study," in Categories: A Colloquium (Henry W.
Johnstone, ed.) Penn State University Department of Phi-
losophy (University Park, Pennsylvania) 1979. Here, John-
stone characterizes philosophical thought as "authentic
travel," through episodes drawn from the Homeric Odys-
sey.
17 Kunze, Donald and Wesley Wei, "The Vanity of Architec-
ture: Topical Thinking and the Practice of Discontinuity,"
Via 8 University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts (Phil-
adelphia, PAl 1986, pp. 54-69
18 Furst, lilian R. Fictions of RomanticIronyHarvard Univer-
sity Press (Cambridge) 1984
19 Nehamas, Alexander, "Writer, Text, Work, Author," lec-
ture delivered at the Philosophy Colloquium, Penn State
University (University Park, Pennsylvania) 1987
20 lowe this pithy observation to the philosopher Prof. David
Black, who teaches the "rhetoric of toys" and other sub-
jects at the University of Scranton (Pennsylvania).
21 Giambattista Vico 0" the Study Methods of Our Time
trans. Elio Gianturco, The Library of the Liberal Arts (New
York) 1965, p. 43
22 ibid., p. 34
23 Curt Dilger is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania
currently teaching at Temple University. His studios inves-
tigate the role of narrative, discontinuity, and seriality of
architecture in "sites" and "parasites." He is currently
engaged in producing drawings that investigate ideo-
J
$'
'ijP'-
/
6.9
Bochelord, Goston L'Eau et les Reves, Essoi sur I'lmagi-
nation de 10 Matiere J. Corti (Paris) 1942, p.1 (outhor's
translation)
2 For a veritable atlos of this spcce. see Millenson, Susan F.
SirJohn Soane's Museum UMIReseorch Press (AnnArbor,
Michigan) 1987; for the brilliont connection between Scone's
mirrors and Joycian poetics, I om indebted to Bloomer,
Jennifer "In the Museyroom," Assemblage 5.
3 Vico, Giambattista The New Science of Giambattista Vice
(Thomas Goddard Bergin ond Max Harold Fisch, trans.)
Cornell University Press (Ithaca, New York) 1968, §410.
For an introduction to the issueof monstrosity token broadly,
see Ceord, Jean Lo Nature et les prodiges: L'lnsolite au
XVle siec1e, en France Librorie Droz (Geneva) 1977 and
Friedman, John B. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art
and Thought Harvard University Press (Cambridge) 1981.
Application of the ideo of monster to architecture istreated
in Froscori, Marco "The Monsters of Representation and
the Fundion of Architecturol Monsters," unpublished ms.
(February 8, 1988) and Kunze, Donald "The Role of the
Monster in Architectural Production and Interpretction,"
Proceedings of the Semiotic Society of America (19861,pp.
146-154.
4 Curtius, Ernst European Literature and the Latin Middle
Ages (Willord R.Trcsk, trons.) Princeton University (Prince-
ton, New Jersey) 1953. See 0150 Monk, Somuel H. The
Sublime, a Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-CenturyEng-
land Modern Language Association of America (New York)
1935. Itshould be mentioned that the present essay in many
points of detail and even fundamental presuppositions
sympathizes and sometimes duplicatesthe original insights
of Eisenmon, Peter "The End of the Classical: the End of
Notes
Summer 1988 JAE41/4
Downloadedby[NewYorkUniversity]at12:3406May2015